SEPARATING the combatants during a drunken brawl is a handful at the best of times. What about after the melee? Good luck trying to sort out who threw the first punch and who was acting in self-defence.

By the time police arrive, key players who still have their wits about them have fled the scene and most of the witnesses are either too drunk or too biased to be reliable. The investigators feel like all the king's horses and all the king's men - they're going to have a hard time putting Humpty Dumpty back together again.

In situations like these, non-human eyes may prove to be a godsend when it comes to piecing evidence together.

Surveillance cameras, as you may have read in this newspaper last week, have become fixtures, almost imperceptibly, outside Halifax bars and on downtown streets.

Businesses find them useful and so do the police. At best, a video camera might help solve a crime or complement testimony. At the very least, it might protect bouncers from sometimes frivolous accusations that they roughed up a customer. Conversely, electronic monitors could also corroborate a patron's complaint.

The watchful eyes are multiplying. In October, Antigonish town council voted to install a video surveillance system in the downtown business district at a cost of about $10,000. The idea is to deter vandals, although vandalism is not particularly acute in Antigonish.

When approached about the issue, most ordinary citizens don't seem to have a problem with it. Nor do we, as long as the surveillance tapes are restricted to the purpose for which they are intended. The likelihood of a lowlight reel of public misbehaviour - from nose-picking and mooning to flashing and illicit sex - making it into a private collection or to some sick Internet site that thrives on public humiliation is quite remote. For one, compiling such a dossier would be more work than it's worth.

There are those, like Antigonish Deputy Mayor Jack Sullivan, who oppose video surveillance on the basis that it is an invasion of privacy. Yet how much privacy is a citizen entitled to in a public place - washroom or changeroom stalls being the notable exception?

If a tourist unwittingly records you and your mistress holding hands in the background as she pans her camcorder around, how is this any different from a static, mounted camera capturing the same scene? Surely, sightseers cannot be expected to ask everyone's permission before they point their gadgets at crowds. Neither should bars or municipal authorities.

Frankly, we don't see much of a difference between businesses using closed-circuit television cameras to protect their premises and banks installing built-in monitors at their ATMs.

These cameras are a fact of life. Although most passersby may be blissfully unaware of where they are located, no one, in this day and age, should assume there is no camera around.

The truth is video surveillance of public spaces is mostly harmless and sometimes useful. It is very common in Britain, for example, where it's helped to nail pickpockets. In Manhattan, thousands of such cameras have been installed since the atrocities of Sept. 11. They may one day help trace the footsteps of a terrorist.

To characterize the proliferation of surveillance equipment as the advent of Big Brother is excessive.

First of all, there isn't somebody watching all the time. In most cases, the cameras blindly record the comings and goings and the tapes are never referred to unless there's been an incident. Second, the tapes are usually only archived for several weeks at best, lest we build massive libraries to house them.

So the next time you spot a camera that has spotted you, relax. It doesn't know you from Adam.